Saturday Night Live (SNL) has become a much more polarizing show as its seasons drag on. Despite being founded as the edgy Not Ready For Prime Time players in 1975, the show lost its edge a while ago. Where the series once drew controversy for talking about cutting-edge subjects and breaking headlines. It now draws controversy from jokes that are based on dated ways of thinking and often worn-out premises. Part of this issue is the increasing pressure to homogenize casting decisions and writing.
SNL alum Leslie Jones recently opened up about the typecasting she experienced while on the show.
Jones on SNL
Jones joined SNL in the 39th season at the age of 47, making her the oldest comedian to join the series. A fact that the show touted until her departure in 2019, after 5 seasons. During that time, she was often cast as characters who were angry or constantly beating people up. The elephant in the room is how often black women are shown this way in the media. Whether it’s indicative of their style of comedy or not.
“Well, they just always would make me angry, or I’m fighting somebody,” she said on The Sam Sander Show. When the host asked if she was okay with that, “I wanted to be on the show, and at the time. I didn’t think that that was what was happening, until it kept happening.”
“And then I was like, every time. I would get a sketch, I was like, ‘Okay, who am I beating up this week?’ And I just started getting frustrated with them. I was like, stop writing me like that,” she explains about pushing back against the typecasting.
A Deeper Issue
When asked if SNL listened to her objections, “No, they never do because they’re like, ‘This is successful,’” says Jones. The show wrote everything off with the idea that she could do different roles when she left. “When you leave here, you’ll be able to make…” “But no, I don’t want to be Chevy Chase….,” she retorts. “I don’t want to be whoever; I want to be Leslie. I want to do everything.”
After hearing about how her concerns were pushed aside, she was asked directly if it is a “healthy place to be a black comic?”
“I think that it is the machine that it is,’ she replies. “That’s just all I can tell you.”
She goes on to explain that she had to direct people on how to do her hair, makeup, and how to light her. A show that has been on for decades didn’t know how to light for a dark skintone? The comedian herself explains that “you have to tell them you have to show them you have to say it.” But she really shouldn’t have to do any of that, and it’s garbage that she did. Jones is very clear that she doesn’t think that certain elements were done maliciously.
“I don’t think a lot of them were racist. I just think they never work with black people…I’m being so serious because it would be a lot of things that I would bring up that was from the black culture, they’d be like, ‘what for real that happened?’”
Jones’ comedy special Life Part 2 recently debuted on Peacock. Her new show on HGTV, Roast My Rental, comes out on July 24th. You can watch her full interview below:
